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About Shoreline Area News

We are Shoreline and Lake Forest Park residents who strive to provide you with news and information about the area in which we live and work. We cover Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, and some events and destinations in surrounding areas.

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comments:

The wording on their stupid press release is so misleading and manipulative....

"As has been envisioned since the light rail planning process..."

-which makes it sound as if this foolish plan has had overwhelming support and buy in to the "envisioning" process from the beginning. It's OTAK, the lobbyists, and the city's vision... and a vocal minority of people in Shoreline who want the outrageous density that sprawls far away from the future station site. These subarea plans are going to create concrete covered urban blight where there was once wooded backyards, a healthy tree canopy, and healthy watersheds. They lump the two issues together (station vs. zoning) when it suits them when they’re two completely separate issues.

The city’s spin that they’ve manufactured in their attempts to “control the conversation” and reframe the overwhelming amount of angry criticism they’ve received has made it even worse. They’ve tried to make the critics seem as if they’re anti-light rail and “afraid of change”, amongst other lies they’ve spun. Oh! And there’s one councilmember calling those critical of the density plans “stupid” - it’s in the public record for this upcoming meeting. Go have a look and see for yourself. They’ve been pushing this agenda that Transit Oriented Development *must* be mega-dense, which is not true and there are dozens of examples of this all over the country, especially in established single family zoned neighborhoods.

One thing that the city wasn’t counting on was the fact that their mishandling of their zoning and land use changes and public outcry is that they’ve created a hostile environment toward redevelopment and that, in itself, is a risk to anyone involved in investing in high-density projects in Shoreline. And to add more uncertainty and risk to this hostile environment, is the possibility of regime change in city council which could 1) end the welfare for the wealthy 12 year property tax exemption program, 2) can the PAO and subarea plans and reboot, 3) put a moratorium on any new density and after that happens see how long it takes PSRC, Sound Transit, futurewise, forterra, or the HDC or some other phantom organization to frivolously sue the city, and when they do... expose them all for the density bullies that they are and in the case of Shoreline, expose that the planned density is actually worse for the environment.

Why would a developer purchase property in the subareas, with the knowledge that the zoning could be rolled back and even if an upzone was applied for, there’s an adoring, united public waiting to play whack-a-mole and fight back, making it very difficult and expensive a long, tedious process to build density that’s way out of scale for our neighborhoods?